Being a fan of anything Medieval, Gothic and
Renaissance, I love the church windows stencil by Crafter’s Workshop. I’ve been
playing with it a lot while gelli printing.However for this project I decided it would look good with a raised
texture and lots of gilding. So I got out my texture paste and scraped through
the stencil onto a canvas using an old store card.

I sprayed the canvas with Dylusions inks in
yellows, reds and oranges then zapped it with a heat gun which made it bubble
up. I recommend doing this outside or in a very well ventilated room (probably
you should wear a mask). I painted round the edges with distress paint then
decided it needed more spray ink.

Next I rubbed the gold gilding wax onto the
windows.

Nothing was really standing out, plus there were
gaps on the canvas, so I added the texture paste stripes and stars, heated it,
sprayed again. Added gold paint, plus more gilding wax in Patina and Deep Red.

Getting better... but it was now all a bit too
golden so I propped the canvas up and sprayed Dylusions Black Marble over the
lot, blotting over the windows with paper towel. Hmm, needs more gilding wax in
places...

And thus I continued faffing about with it until I
was happy.As you may have guessed, this
is all about building up layer upon layer until you get the effect you want.

It’s not perfect (the stars are a bit misshapen
and too close to the windows) but it was fun to create.

Tear pieces of Tissue Tape and adhere to tag.
Apply paint over the tape, almost obscuring the tape. Stamp handwritten tag
from Oxford Impressions April In Paris onto tag.

Apply Fresco Finish Vintage Lace paint to white
cardstock. Stamp girl from Oxford Impressions Times Past. Cut out and adhere to
tag with silicone glue. Stamp a word and adhere to tag. Embellish the tag with
lace and a heart shape button. Lay aside.

Paint PaperArtsy Crunchy Tissue Paper with Fresco
Finish Vintage Lace. Stamp a postal mark and once again the handwritten tag
(see above). Tear into pieces. Now layer the stamped Crunchy Tissue paper and
embellished tag with lace to the corrugated cardboard. Attach one strip of
prepared Crunchy Tissue Paper to the bottom of the corrugated cardboard with
Tim Holtz Mini Attacher.Lynne

Friday, 26 April 2013

Hi everyone, it seems like Spring has finally
arrived this week at last and I’m hoping I will soon see one of my favourite
creatures, the butterfly, in my garden as we have lots of the type of shrubs
they like although they haven’t long had leaves on this year.

I’ve made a canvas for you this week with one of
the new Tim Holtz burlap canvasses with of course, a butterfly theme. If you
haven’t tried one of these canvasses yet, they’re really fabulous as unlike
others on the market, they have a stiff backing panel, which means you can
stamp on them with paint or stencil easily – if you can bear to cover it up
that is!

·Using a palette knife or an old credit
card, apply a fairly thick layer of Grunge Paste to the canvas on the top and
left with the leaf stencil. Carefully remove the stencil and wash immediately
with warm water to remove the excess paste. Allow the paste to dry. I left mine
plain as I like the raw colour but you could apply some paint through the
stencil if you want more colour.

·Whilst the paste is drying, stamp some
butterflies on to cream card with the Adirondack inks. I chose the largest and
the second smallest and stamped 3 of each butterfly in both colours as I was
unsure how many I would need. Cut them out and bend the wings with scissor
blades.

·Attach a piece of lace across the
bottom of the canvas and add the paper rose at the bottom left. Using a finger,
dab on some of the Liquid Pearls for a little shimmer.

·Die cut some flourishes from the
patterned paper scrap – I cut 3 for my canvas. Stick a trimmed Soar Adage
Ticket in one of the ornate plate frames and add the supplied brads in the
holes. Attach this to the canvas with foam tape and strong glue, roughly in the
centre of the remaining uncovered space.

·Arrange the flourishes and butterflies
on canvas, flowing up the right side and round the top right corner. When
you’re happy with the arrangement, stick them on. Finish off with a small
butterfly added to the left side for balance.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

For this project I went back to a wonderful set of
stamps by Lynne Perrella for PaperArtsy called Collection LPC005. I
also went back to a card design that I have not explored for a long time: The
Stepper Card. It a design that does allow us to be creative and build up a
picture.

The first thing we need to do for this project is
to make a stepper card. For this card we need to have the centre part as the
one that comes to the front. If you don't have a template to cut out a stepper
card, let me know and I will see if I can upload one or send one via your email.

Start to stamp up the imagery that you want to
use. As you can see, the banner set from this set of stamps does allow you the
opportunity to bend the stamp and make, as usual with Lynne Perrella stamps, the
perfect impression. Like all stamping, it's the paper that you're going to stamp
on. So if possible always buy the best stamping paper/card that you can afford.

After you have stamped out all the imagery you
want for the project, we can now start one of the best bits in the wonderful
world of stamping, selecting the colours we want to use and then colour and start to
build up the story we want to show.

After I had placed a layer of colour onto my
stamped out imagery, I took my mister and a roll of paper ready to start the
next process. I had to spritz a layer of water on the side bars and the main
topper. The reason for the paper towels was to soak up as much water as
possible. As the distressing pens react to water and will 'spread', by soaking
up the water as quickly as I could, stopped the colour from dissipating and
leaving just a mess. Once I had used the paper towel, I grabbed my heat gun to
dry the stamped and coloured image as quickly as possible. When I was happy
with the result, I took a golden gel pen and placed some colour along the crown
and frame.

To make thing easy for myself, I took some metal
dies from a Spellbinders set and then ran them through my eBosser. When it came
to cutting out the gold mirror card, all I had to do was to select the next die
up in the set. I opted to use a die rather than use a pair of scissors and a
corner edge punch. I just opted for this option to save some time.

After I once again used a metal die, the next step
for all the mirror card cut-outs was to distress the edges. I wanted to do this
so that it looks worn and aged. It also, when the next step is done helps a lot.

To make the edge of the mirror card stand out, I
used the edger to distress the edge. When I then used an inking tool on the edge
of the card that had been inked up with Rusty Hinge (a wonderful deep rich
colour), as it was worn, the ink took to
it a lot easier. It also makes the edge 'pop' out, giving it depth. Also it can
act as a layer behind the card you have distressed. I like to use a lot of ink
so that it has a depth of colour.

Taking the main image, I wanted to bring this into
the colour scheme and not to be 'white and new'. To do this, I used a Tea Dye ink pad. Then using the Glossy Accents, I placed a layer on the
face as I wanted it to be slightly 3D when looked at.

For the banner, I had to build up a clear building
block. Acrylic glue is the perfect way to do this, as it can build up a firm
block of glue that when dry, can be then re-glued and securedto where you want it to be. I could have
used dimensional pads bit I would have had to use a lot to build up the depth that
I wanted. The banner had to stand out so I wanted depth.

Now then, this could be the part that will scare a
lot of you. I have to admit it's one of those 'in for a penny in for a pound'
moments. You just have to have faith in your crafting ability. The aim is to
let paint drip down from the top edges - if you get the paint to be like double
cream you're going to be okay. Mix up your paint and then take your spatula and
scoop some up. The aim is to use the spatula as if it was a knife and you are
spreading butter on some toast. If you want to help it form drips, pick up the
card and just bang it carefully on to the table. Using a heat gun will help
stop the paint and dry it, so you do have some control over the action of the
paint. You want to do this using your 3 colours, just do the same and take your time. If you are not comfortable practice - I have used up quite a few sheets of old card trying to get this right.
The card was never thrown away but became backdrops to other projects.

I have been lucky enough to buy a set of 350
words. The only downside to this purchase, was that they were all in their own
box and were magnetic. At first I was a little disappointed when I bought them
as I was after something else. But now they are a important part of my crafting.

There you have it, a stepper card that was able to
be embellished how I now do my crafting. I always thought that this style and
others would only fit into the way we normally use them. I have to hold my hand
up and say I think there is a reason now to revisit all the other card designs
and see what I can now do with them.

I hope that this might inspire you to have a look
and maybe explore what you can do with an 'Old style' card design. I say old but
then isn't everything old as it's all been done before? My old lecturer at Uni
once told me, that in fashion nothing, is new it's all been done before. The only
real 'New' idea was the Mini skirt back in the 60's.